The second novel by Garth Greenwell tells an intimate story of the experience of a young man searching for ways to express his emotions. ( )

The first two stories or chapters of this book are powerful, strong, emotional. They convey emotions and feelings almost as strongly as they are actually experienced. After those stories, the book is a muddle.
I do not know if the book is intended as a novel or as a set of short stories. If it is a novel, it is even worse than what I have already said. It does not tell a coherent story, does not hang together, does not flow from one chapter to another.
The first two stories may be describing the same characters or they may not be. It is hard to tell, since characters not given names but instead represented by single letters.
The feelings of both ecstasy and shame described so vividly in the opening two chapters reveal a writer who has experienced both. He realizes that all of the contrary emotions and judgments of sex and sexuality society holds of all people, particularly those entering adulthood, are even more vivid, more poignant, more painful for gay men.
Shame and denial dog some gay men all their lives. Others end their own lives early because they cannot face the truth of their existence.
Beyond this content, however, the real indignities of the writing show. Greenwell divides sections of his narrative into what appear to be paragraphs but are not. In one five-page "paragraph," for instance, the setting is described, a person delivers monolog, then the author fills-in some description. In addition, however, another speaker says something and one or the other of the characters is also thinking about some things. There are no quotation marks, no italics, no other common tools of English mechanics to assist a reader in finding comprehensible input in the wiring.
Greenwell needs to learn that paragraphs are formed into multiple paragraphs because each construction carries different ideas. In Greenwell's work, several ideas are swept into one long set of words he apparently thinks is a paragraph.
A writer's goal is, above all else, to convey meaning. Good writers do this without creating confusion and ambiguity. When a reader has to dissect a paragraph, re-read it, or guess at what is happening in it, the writer has failed.
This book held promise which makes all the more tragic that it fails so badly. ( )

A writer with an aversion to paragraphing who nonetheless writes a lucid, gorgeous prose. Extraordinary writing about sex.

Reading this book was an amazing experience of seeing my country through the eyes of an outsider (they were even in my hometown!). The juxtaposition of being gay and being in Bulgaria is one that is so rarely spoken about, I really appreciated how raw and open the fragments were. The book touched me and would have been an absolute 5* read if not for the last story and how strongly I disagree with what happened there and the way it was presented. ( )

Greenwell has a way with words that I find fascinating. Just want to sink into his stories. ( )